Sunday, April 16, 2017

Can Color Challenge You?

Have you ever mixed colors and gotten a surprise? I've been doing some color studies to learn more and to get the hues I want for my series. One of the hues I want to get with Procion MX dyes is a mustard hue. I know that they sell a dye color called mustard and it looks close to the hue I want to achieve, but I'm trying to make my colors by using the colors I already have. I'm in the mode of using what I have before I buy more. And theoretically, I should be able to get a nice mustard by mixing the right proportions of purple and yellow. I proved this with a paint study I did. I made a color wheel on watercolor paper and then started with pure yellow at the top and added purple paint little by little and painted a space at the bottom of the wheel with as neutral a color I could get with yellow and purple mixed. On another wheel, I painted purple at the top and went towards the same neutral color at the bottom. Here are the two wheels of reducing color saturation or intensity.

intensity wheels

I used Profab opaque textile paint for these. As you can see, I got some nice mustard colors in the top wheel. So I thought if I took Procion Sun Yellow dye (which is the same hue as the yellow paint) and Procion Grape dye (which is the same hue as the purple paint) and mixed them, I would get close to the same hues on the fabric that I got on the paper.

As you can guess, that's not how it came out. Here are the results on cotton broadcloth.

Yellow with Grape added

The yellows turned more green as I added grape.

Grape with yellow added

The purples aren't too far off the paint samples, just lighter. Isn't it interesting how the paint samples compare to the dye samples? It's all about chemistry. How the dyes react with each other and with the fabric. On silk, it would look even different. Bottom line, I'm still working on mixing mustard. I came close with bronze dye and tangerine, but the tangerine splits out a little too much and gives orange streaks.

So while I'm working on that, I've started one of the pieces in the series, because I did successfully come up with the blue-gray that I wanted. And this week brought good news. I sold my piece Inner Balance 2 to a doctor. He asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was a fiber artist and gave him my elevator speech about art quilts and what I do. He was interested so on my second visit, I took two of my works to show him in person what an art quilt looks like. He bought one of them. What a nice surprise.

Inner Balance 2

The other good news is that my piece Rise was juried into SAQA's exhibit Growth. It will be in Dunedin Fine Art Centerfrom June 9 - August 18 in Dunedin, Florida.

Rise

So I'm continuing with my color studies and creating a wealth of a dye notebook and working on paint studies, too. There is so much to learn about color and I'm finding it fascinating. I'm linking this with Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Thanks. The tangerine, itself, didn't split. In the mixture of the tangerine and bronze, the tangerine split out. In my other mixtures, the colors didn't split much. I don't want bright orange streaks in my final piece. I'm going to work with it more this week. If it doesn't work, I'll just order mustard dye.

The bronze always splits, I still don't know what color the bronze dye is all by itself. I love it tho and use it a lot, it goes great with black, burgundy and greens. Your dye experiments seem like a lot of work, but I am learning a lot just watching what you do. Thank you. I really like the crackle on the white "moon" on your art piece, is that a hand made fabric or commercial? Beautifully done.

I like the bronze a lot, too. To see what colors are in it, place a very few grains onto fabric and spray lightly with water. But wear a mask when you do it.The moon was made by couching embroidery floss to get the lines in the moon. Thanks. I wanted to mimic the veins from the rocks into the moon.

Many congratulations on your recent exhibition acceptance. It is always a good day when a work is headed outside one's "storage area"! LOL! The piece is very, very nice. Thank you, too, for the positive feedback and kind words on my blog regarding my recently finished triptych! It means the world to me! Thanks!Susan

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About Me

I am a retired science teacher. I taught at the same public high school for 23 years. I got bit by the art bug in 2000 when I couldn't find a comforter for our bed that I liked and visited our local quilt shop to learn how to make a quilt. Instead, I took a class on making small art quilts and then took workshops, read books and magazines, joined a local art group that specializes in fiber arts, and became obsessed with art and fiber.
One of the big influences in my art is what I see when I travel. I backpacked around the world for 1 1/2 years in between jobs and traveled extensively in the summers while I was teaching. I'm in the process of developing a cohesive body of work which I hope to show you as I progress. I also hope to show you small works I make as distractions from that and for just plain fun.